


Sitting at a Bar

by cherrynoel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 06:17:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9980027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrynoel/pseuds/cherrynoel
Summary: After the death of his best friend Charlie, Castiel meets with one of her brothers at a bar.





	

As I gave my quarter a gentle push, it fell into the jukebox with a clink. I made my song selection, and I couldn’t help but think of every time I had come here before, every time we had been here together.  _Charlie._ I flipped the pages on the jukebox, and with each little swish of a turning page, the tears in my eyes came closer to falling. I found her favorite song and selected it, the sound of the music awakening something inside of me that just willed me to _do_ something before I started to cry.

I wound my way through the small crowd that had gathered at the bar. The bartender, a heavily tattooed man, was too busy with another patron to help me, so I just took a seat, tapping my fingers to the beat of the song as I waited, closing my eyes and just reminding myself to breathe.

She didn’t have to wait for the bartender. She always told me it was in the way she carried herself. Even if she didn’t want the men, they didn’t know that. “You just have to make men think you are the best thing they could have. If you carry yourself like that, like you _know_ that nothing could bring you down, like you _know_ you’re the best, then you will be. I am your best friend, Cas. If I don’t tell you that, who will?” I wish she was here to tell me that now, but she wasn’t. She wouldn’t be here ever again. She was gone.

I barely heard the footsteps through the music before the voice pried me from my thoughts. “Hey Cas,” the voice said, straining to make sure I could hear over the rest of the noise in the bar. “Did you order the drinks yet?”

I opened my eyes and stopped tapping. Standing in front of me, also trying to maintain a semblance of a normal attitude was one of her brothers, Dean. “No,” I responded. “The bartender hasn’t come over yet.” I patted the stool next to me. “Come on, sit with me. We can think about her together.” I stared at his face and felt warmer inside. Even though he was upset, he was still beautiful.

As he sat, he yelled at the bartender. “Come on, man! There are other people here!” His body seemed to sag when he didn’t have to hold it up. He glanced over at me, a forced smile stretching across his face. “How was she able to get the bartender over here without even trying? It was like she had a super power or something.”

A sad smile spread across my own face. “I was just thinking about that.” I started to tap again. The song was getting ready to come to an end, and I listened harder, not wanting to lose this moment. “That’s the first thing she did. Went and played her song and then came straight to the bar. The bartender generally had her drink waiting.”

He nodded. “I know. It’s hard to believe she’s gone. I always thought she’d outlive us all, just to say she did. I used to tease her, say that she’d die young because her life was too easy to last forever.” He stopped long enough to order two beers from the bartender, who had finally arrived. “I didn’t think it would actually happen.”

I slipped my hand across the bar until it found his, and ran my finger across his rough knuckles. “You’ve got to know she is throwing the greatest party in heaven.” I squeezed his hand and tried to give the most convincing smile I could, trying to cheer at least one of us up. “She’s probably telling God that his headcanons on Harry Potter are completely wrong.”

He pulled his hand away and clenched his eyes in anger. “I miss her. What kind of person crashes a car just to get back at his girlfriend? She would have never seen it coming. If that bastard didn’t do that, she’d still be here.”

He was right. If she hadn’t been walking alongside the road, if I had offered to give her a ride, if the shrapnel from the exploding car hadn’t hit her, she would be here. She was an innocent; she didn’t even know the man driving that car. But the shrapnel did hit her, and now she was gone…and we’d lost her because someone made a stupid decision while they were drunk.  I was angry now, too. “At least he was put in jail. She had justice.”

The bartender headed back our way with the drinks. He snatched the beer the bartender held out, took a long drink, and whispered, “Not enough,” just as the song ended.

I wondered, taking a sip of my own bitter tasting beer, whether or not the anger we shared would be enough to bring us together, finally. “Do you think,” I said to him, gripping my beer bottle. “Do you think we could do better?”

As if the idea transferred from my head to his, he turned to me quickly. “I think if I had a chance, I could kill him without hesitation.”

At that point, I knew. We would have to get that chance. To gain justice from her death, to let go of the anger, and, hopefully, to find love.


End file.
